


A Borrowed Summer

by littlechinesedoll



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Child Loss, Difficulty Conceiving, Established Relationship, Family, Fluff, Intersex Omegas, M/M, Marriage, Mates, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:50:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3394205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlechinesedoll/pseuds/littlechinesedoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian thinks there are too many children in this house. Until he realized that there actually aren’t enough of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **_*edit: I edited some stuff and added more fluff and thoughts from the children. :3 The addition starts at where Damian leaves Bruce's office, and ends when Clark enters at the end._ **
> 
>  
> 
> The title is inspired by this quote: 
> 
> “Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.” – Samuel Rutherford 
> 
> Written at 3am. Unbeta'd. Mistakes are mine.

It was raining.

A thunderstorm that Damian was capable enough of driving through, but it was hard enough for Bruce to allow Damian to cut school. Even Bruce knew tertiary education professors barely gave a shit about attendance. Summer terms weren’t necessary, but Damian saw fit to take subjects during the summer, just to lessen his load of general subjects for the next semesters.

Bored, surprisingly lazy, and surrounded by coursework, Damian decided to go downstairs and maybe join the others for a warm mug of hot cocoa and their marathon of _Tom and Jerry_ , even if he never understood the appeal of watching a cartoon about a never ending cat and mouse chase.

“Ah, Master Damian,” said Alfred as Damian entered the kitchen. He slid a mug over to Damian on the counter, and handed him the bag of marshmallows.

“Thank you, Alfred,” said Damian as he took the mug, and put a few pieces of marshmallows in.

Alfred never thought he’d see the day those words would ever come out of Damian’s mouth. It took a lot of hugs, mostly from Dick, a lot of gentle coaxing and firm orders from Bruce, and a lot of time spent with his brothers and sisters. He was glad that Damian had mellowed out, but he still acted older than he was.

Mug of cocoa in hand, Damian made his way to the living room, where most of his family members were gathered. Richard was on one of the chaises, his hot cocoa half-finished on the coffee table, laughing with Mr. Kent’s clone at something Jerry did that Damian failed to find amusing. The Clone was on the sofa with Drake’s legs on his lap, with Drake lying on the sofa, reading a book and paying no attention to the TV. Brown and Cassandra were cuddling on a bean bag on the floor half listening to the show and talking to each other; Todd was passed out on a floor pillow, mug of cocoa forgotten; Colin was in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn and Mr. Kent’s foster son, Christopher, was lying on his belly on another floor pillow beside him, deeply engrossed in the cartoon show as Colin.

Damian stood there behind the couch Drake and Kent were on, sipping his cocoa and trying to see how his older siblings could possibly such mindless waste of visuals entertaining. Sometimes he wondered where his father and his husband found all their patience for their children. Every single one of them, for the tiny exception of Drake as much as he’d hate to admit, acted like they were ten on several occasions. Cassandra not so much, but when Brown was concerned, Cassandra would just go with whatever Brown wanted to leap at.

Richard was a bottomless pit of hugs, smiles, and would probably find baking cookies for all the children in Gotham his calling. Todd liked teasing Richard and stealing the cookies he baked; he also liked annoying Drake as he read a book, or stealing and drinking his glass of milk at breakfast. Drake would sometimes, when he has had it with Todd’s shenanigans, would promptly punch him in the face once, retrieve whatever Todd had stolen from him, and walk away without a word. Brown, some years ago, had once begged his father to take her and Cassandra shopping, and they came home with so much pink, he swore he heard his father say he felt a little light headed. Colin, and the two younger Kents also had their moments, one of which involving a trampoline and the pool. All three were grounded. Even though Damian also had his fair share of bullshit, at least he was ten.

This led him to conclude that Wayne Manor had too many children. He couldn’t imagine how his father and his husband, and naturally, Alfred, could manage all this chaos, but they did, and most of the time it went smoothly. Richard used to live in Bludhaven, but ever since his promotion to Batman and his father’s retirement, coming back to live with them at the Manor was of course a need. Some people would agree that still living with your parents at Richard’s age would be embarrassing, but Richard felt no such thing, and was happy to move back. Todd came and went as he pleased, and his father was just glad that he came home.

As for the elder of the two young Kents, he used to live with Drake in an apartment in Gotham, but since Christopher started to live with them at the manor, he thought it’d be fun to for them to all be here. It actually just meant there would be civil war during breakfast over the last bowl of Froot Loops, and his father and Mr. Kent would be calmly dodging whatever was in the air as they quietly had their toast and coffee while reading the day’s paper.

It amazed Damian how this many people, with resources such as theirs, with tempers such as his and Todd’s, could stay in one place and not burn it down. It also amazed him how so many grown (and super powered pseudo) alphas, Mr. Kent, his Clone, Christopher, Todd, Cassandra, and himself, could live under one roof without much casualty. Usually, it’s he and Todd who were always at each other’s throats, and Mr. Kent would break them up, and then it was his father who’d decide the punishment. Now he’s careful of engaging Drake in a fight, because no matter how many times he would tell the Clone to back off, the half-Kryptonian would always come to his rescue. He had already broken one of his ribs trying to get back at Drake for something so shallow he couldn’t even remember, and that he was too stupidly young and proud to let go.

“Anybody want anything?” Dick sat up on his chaise. “I’m gonna go get some chips,”

“I’ll get it!” Christopher got up from the floor and turned to head for the kitchen. “Oh, hey, Damian! Are you going to join us?”

“No,” said Damian. “I don’t find this show entertaining,”

“Oh,” Christopher looked like he’d break a bone thinking why Damian didn’t like _Tom and Jerry_. “Okay,” he said as he made his way to the kitchen.

“You don’t find any show entertaining,” said the Clone.  

“I like Spartacus,” Damian said defensively.

Colin looked over his shoulder. “That’s because you like all the killing there,”

“Hey, Little D!” Dick said cheerfully.

Damian’s eye twitched. He had not been little for a few years now. He was also taller than Drake. “I am not little, Richard,”

“Of course you aren’t,” Dick grinned.

“Aaaww,” Brown cooed. “Little Damian, are you sad you don’t have anyone younger than you to bully?”

“Shut up…” Jason mumbled sleepily.  

Damian’s grip on his mug tightened as he started to get annoyed. “I am not—!”

And then it hit him.

This house didn’t have too many children. It didn’t have enough.

* * *

 Damian knocked on the door three times before entering. His father was at his desk, working on a stack of papers. He couldn’t tell what they were, but a few steps closer and he could tell that all of the papers scattered on the desk were from Wayne Industries.

“Damian,” Bruce looked up and saw Damian approaching his desk. “The others, I believe, are watching TV. Why don’t you join them? I enjoyed _Tom and Jerry_ myself when Dick was young,” he said as he signed a document. “And later, if it’s no too much trouble, please go downstairs and tell Alfred that Clark will be bringing home some Chinese, and some Japanese for me, for lunch so he doesn’t have to prepare anything,”

“Yes, Father,” Damian nodded. He shifted in his spot, unable to figure out how to bring up the subject.

“Something troubles you, Damian?” Bruce asked as he grouped some papers together and set them aside. He adjusted the glasses on his nose, took another piece of document from a stack, and started writing some remarks on the edges.

“Father,” Damian started. “Why haven’t you and Mr. Kent had a child yet? You’re healthy Omega, and Mr. Kent, though not from this world, I’m sure is a robust pseudo-Alpha, and the both of you are perfectly capable of having one. And I know that you are fond of children, otherwise this house wouldn’t be so full,”

Bruce suddenly stopped writing, and froze in his seat.

Damian was unsure of how to receive this reaction. “Father?” he said softly.

Bruce set the pen down and blankly stared at the document he was writing on. “ _Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not try to stop them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’_ Matthew chapter nineteen verse fourteen,”

Damian resisted a frown and his brows met in confusion. “I don’t understand,” What did a bible verse have to do with this?

Bruce took a long, deep breath, took off the glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He leaned back on his chair and for a few moments avoided Damian’s eyes, and then looked up to face his son.

“Before Talia sent you to live with me,” Bruce began reluctantly. This wasn’t something he thought he’d ever share with Damian. “Before Clark and I bonded,”

Damian could see that this was a story Bruce was struggling to tell.

“I fell pregnant and we chose to keep it a secret,” Bruce looked away and couldn’t maintain the eye contact with him. “Rather, I wanted to keep it a secret. Clark only respected my wishes. And I respected his wishes that I take leave from work and duty. Eventually, the League found out, but by the time I decided I was ready to tell our teammates, I suffered a late miscarriage,”

“Stop,” said Damian apprehensively, immediately regretting that he asked. A late miscarriage. That meant his father had been far along his term. That’s what the bible verse meant. “Stop, you don’t have to continue—”

“And Clark and I had a stillborn little girl,” Bruce said shakily.

“Father,” Damian frowned sadly.

“Placental abruption at twenty-five weeks. It was a summer night, and Clark wasn’t home yet, when I woke up to no movement, and I was bleeding. I yelled for him. I yelled that something was wrong and I was losing the baby.” He gave a sad, fond chortle. “Clark broke the windows getting into the room.” Bruce could clearly remember the look of horror on Clark’s face when he saw all the blood on their bed. “He quickly checked me over and explained to me on the flight over to Leslie that the placenta had separated from the uterine walls, and that she wasn’t getting any nutrients from me anymore. We didn’t make it to Leslie in time.” He could also clearly remember the deathly pale face of his little girl. “There was nothing wrong with me. It happened for no reason,” 

Damian felt suffocated.

“The scar from the C-Section done to retrieve her is the cleanest one I have,” Bruce absently traced the horizontal scar on his abdomen. “It hurts when it rains, or when it’s about to rain, or when the weather is cold,”

There was a long moment of silence before Damian spoke. The revelation agitated him. It angered him too, that something as simple and uncontrollable as the change of weather could keep a memory so painful so fresh. “I’m sorry for your loss, Father,” he finally said.

Bruce looked at his son. “We tried, Damian. We tried again, many times. But I guess, I am not meant to bear my own children,” he paused to gather his thoughts. “She just wasn’t for us. And we are blessed enough to have you and your siblings,”

Damian could do nothing but nod.

Bruce gave him a single nod back. “Now, go back downstairs, and tell them about lunch,” he put his glasses back on, pulled himself together, and went back to work. “I will join you downstairs shortly,”

“Yes, Father,” Damian nodded again, and left the room.

* * *

 

After Bruce’s confession, suddenly Damian felt like his room was too big and too small at the same time. He sat on his bed, surrounded by his coursework, suddenly feeling nauseous as he tried to shake off the unexplainable, unreasonable agitation. He left his room and headed to the library with his laptop, thinking that maybe the large windows and spaces there could clear his head.

Miscarriages were normal, right, Damian thought as he sat down on a bean bag in the middle of a reading area and opened his laptop, and started reading about it. It happened to many mothers to be. He felt like he shouldn’t have heard something so personal.

“It bothers you,”

Damian, so glued to Google and in finding any reason to why such terrible thing could have happened, audibly gasped and turned to the voice. He frowned as he saw Richard approaching him.

The eldest of his father’s children sat beside him on the carpet. “It bothered us, too. It was painful, but not as painful as watching Bruce, and we will never get to know what it’s like for him. He buried two of his children,” said Richard softly. “In a way, she looked a lot like Bruce’s mom. They named her Eve. It’s—”

“A Hebrew name meaning life,” Damian said softly. That was the complete opposite of his name.  

“Yeah,”  

“Is…” Damian tried, “Is she buried on the grounds?”

Richard nodded, and led Damian to the window overlooking the grounds, where they could see Bruce’s parents’ headstones. “She’s that tree.” He pointed to the new, still rather small tree by their grandparents’ headstones. “There’s a small plaque on that tree. It says _, Eve, beloved daughter and sister, born sleeping and a blossom far too beautiful for Earth_ , and a bible verse,” he paused. “I think they wanted her to live in some other way,”

Damian remembered the verse Bruce told him.

“I go there every once in a while to ask her to come back, maybe. Or I dunno, send one of her friends over to come and play,” Richard gave a sad chuckle and looked at Damian, then went back to their spot on the floor, and closed his laptop. “Don’t look for a reason. It happened long ago,”

“But Father’s wounds are still fresh,” Damian said quietly. “He said cold weather makes the scar hurt,”

“Scars remind us that the past is real, and time does not really heal wounds. You just get used to them,” said Richard. “And this time, this painful memory, is more real to him than to any of us,”

Damian didn’t answer.

“Her things are still in the nursery,” Richard smiled to himself. “You should have seen them, Damian, arguing over what color to paint the room, instead of League business. They shopped for clothes and toys and tiny socks. It felt like we were a normal family with no secrets, no masks, preparing for a new addition,”

“A nursery?” Damian’s eyes widened. “They set up a nursery?”

“Yeah,” Richard nodded. “It’s been locked for a long time now. We’ve never been in there. And we’re going to continue to respect Bruce and Clark and not go in there, until they see us fit to see it,”

Damian nodded lightly.

Richard put an arm over his shoulders and led him out of the library. “C’mon, we can get something light to eat before lunch,”

“Father said to tell Mr. Pennyworth that Mr. Kent will be coming home with Chinese food,”

“Wonderful!” said Richard, “I’d love some Chinese. Clark better get a lot of lemon chicken and fried rice,”

* * *

 

Suddenly the living room was a disaster. Damian had absolutely no idea why his siblings, all at most twice as old as he was, were _so_ enamored with art materials. The furniture was pushed to the side, and newspapers lined the carpets. There were papers of all sizes and thickness, letter, legal, even the ones used for posters, and crayons, markers, highlighters, calligraphy pens, colored pencils, paint, and brushes all over, and everybody was busy attempting to draw.

Damian raised a brow as Richard excitedly joined them. Drake, he thought would still be reading, but his book was forgotten on the sofa, and he was beside the Clone doodling something with the calligraphy pens.

“Look, Damian!” said Christopher as he held up a white colored construction paper with a messy, fat, brown feathered, red chested bird painted on. “It’s you!” he smiled.

Damian’s eye twitched. “Is not,”

“Is too!” said Colin defensively. Damian was getting the idea that Colin helped Christopher paint it. “It’s a robin! Well, that’s like you and several others, but that’s you!”

“Is there a reason why out of nowhere the living room looks like a kindergarten school with students old enough for a PhD?” Damian asked.

“Because it’s fun!” said Richard with a smile, and held up a drawing of a light blue bird with Nightwing’s blue stripes. “See, now I drew me!”

“I do not look like that!” said Drake.

“Uh, yeah you do,” said the Clone.

Damian took a peek at the Clone’s doodle. He almost snickered at the Clone’s effort at trying to draw Red Robin.

“If anyone looks like a condom, that’s Jason!” Drake looked at Todd.

“Hey!” Todd frowned. “I do _not_ look like a condom!”

“Yes, you do, Jay!” Richard grinned as he slid over a drawing of the old Red Hood helmet with his best attempt at Todd’s annoyed expression on the red bullet shaped helmet.

“Do not!” said Todd petulantly.

The argument went on, and he glanced at the all the pink on Brown and Cassandra’s work.

“I don’t have any neon,” said Cassandra, looking through her bucket of markers.

“Here!” Brown reached for a neon pink highlighter from another box of art materials.

Damian sighed, and went to the kitchen where Mr. Pennyworth was probably preparing something for lunch. “Mr. Pennyworth?”

“Master Damian,” he looked up at Damian as he pressed crushed some biscuits and sugar for a cake base into glass container. “Please hand over that bowl of cream cheese. Be careful of the mixer, sir,”

Damian removed the metal bowl from the mixer and handed it over to Alfred. “Father told me to tell you that Mr. Kent will be bringing home food for lunch, and that you don’t have to prepare,”

“Oh, yes,” said Alfred as he evenly poured the cream cheese mixture into the container. “I have received a text message from Master Clark saying just the same thing. So I busied myself with dessert. No bake cheesecake, for I believe your stepfather will arrive soon,”

Damian nodded and went back to the living room. Mr. Kent was arriving soon, which probably meant he had to tell everyone to clean up. Because even he wouldn’t like coming home to a disaster.  However, he didn’t need to tell anyone that.

It caught him by surprise that Christopher suddenly sat up. “Conner!” he said, “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” the Clone looked up at him from his abstract painting with Drake.

“Is someone upstairs with Bruce?” Christopher asked.

“No,” said Richard. “What’s going on?”

Conner’s eyes widened. “Clean up. Clean up right now,” he said as he put the lids back on the paint containers.

“Conner?” said Drake worriedly. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“Everybody off the floor,” the Clone started cleaning up. “Chris!”

Confused, everyone got off the floor, and within a blink, the Clone and Christopher had everything packed up and the living room was clean and back to its usual arrangement, with their drawings all on the coffee table drying, and their art materials back in the boxes they kept them in.

“Hey, not everyone has super hearing, you know!” Brown frowned. “Care to share with the class?”

Mr. Kent walked into the room disheveled, but thankfully dry, from the rain, holding a big bags of take out, and set it down one of the coffee tables.

“Can you hear it?” Christopher asked Mr. Kent.  

“Yes,” Mr. Kent answered. “I will talk to all of you later. Conner, Chris, don’t say anything,” and with a burst of speed, Mr. Kent headed up to Father’s office.

* * *

Bruce had been cleaning up when Clark entered the office. “Clark!” he said as he stood up, moving to welcome Clark home after half day at work. “I have something I need you to sign—mmmhh!”

Clark kissed him. Clark kissed him like they hadn’t seen each other in weeks. Clark wrapped his arms around him, and kissed him long, slow, and hard, and pressed their foreheads together when he pulled away. “I love you,” he breathed. “I love you,”

“I love you, too,” Bruce panted heavily. “What brought this on?”

“The sushi,” Clark answered vaguely. “You asked for sushi. And now I can hear it. Loud and clear, Bruce,”

“Hear what?” Bruce asked confusedly.

Clark smiled. “I can hear your heartbeat, going at eighty beats per minute. And another, going at a hundred, coming from you,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to give them a happy, hopeful ending. And I've read somewhere that 100bpm for the first trimester is around 5 weeks, when the baby's heart just started beating. It goes up to 170bpm at 10 weeks then goes back down to 130-160bpm.
> 
> I'm going with the idea that Damian arrived during Bruce's early thirties. So now that he's a university student at around 20 perhaps, Bruce can still have that baby and be happy.
> 
> Also, I wrote Damian a little mellow. And more mature, though still withdrawn. Bruce isn't going to take his shit calling Clark an alien. Conner's a different story. There are too many Kents to call him just Kent. xD This was my first time writing Damian, so please be nice! D:


	2. Chapter 2

Notes: I just added some stuff, and only added this chapter for notes/and for a bump.

The addition starts at where Damian leaves Bruce's office, and ends when Clark enters at the end. 

Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to give them a happy, hopeful ending. 
> 
> I'm going with the idea that Damian arrived during Bruce's early thirties. So now that he's a university student at around 20 perhaps, Bruce can still have that baby and be happy. 
> 
> Also, I wrote Damian a little mellow. And more mature, though still withdrawn. Bruce isn't going to take his shit calling Clark an alien. Conner's a different story. There are too many Kents to call him just Kent. xD This was my first time writing Damian, so please be nice! D:


End file.
